A whiff on pension reforms

Published 5:45 pm, Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Gov. Jerry Brown is incensed. And the rest of California should be, too. The board overseeing California's $300 billion public employee pension pool is bending the rules to defeat reforms designed to cut retirement abuses.

The major change is a stunner. Under guidelines approved by California Public Employees' Retirement System, a worker can take a higher-paying temporary spot and then count the extra pay toward a bigger pension check. It's called spiking and supposedly was stopped by changes adopted by the Legislature and pushed by Brown two years ago.

The retirement panel - composed of labor representatives and elected officials - went against this clear mandate governing pay rules for new hires. The members voted to allow some 99 special payment categories that workers can tap to raise their wages and eventual pensions.

Some of the changes dealing with extra training and responsibilities make sense. But resurrecting spiking doesn't. The board "got it wrong. This vote undermines the pension reforms enacted just two years ago,"' Brown said, who had warned the panel last week about the changes.